Amanda spent another half hour at the woman’s apartment, and when she reached the street, it was dusk. The street was deserted—except, that is, for a man sitting on the hood of her car.
Or was that her car? In the dim light, she couldn’t be sure. She started in that direction, her hand fumbling through her purse for the can of Mace she always carried. She slid it out and then put it into the pocket of her jacket as she continued to walk toward her car, now certain that he was in fact sitting on it.
Then the doors to one of the apartment buildings burst open and two young men came running down the steps just as a car pulled up at the curb. They stopped when they saw her and she hurried past, ignoring their comments. But when she reached the corner, she glanced back and saw that there were now four of them following her.
Cold terror slithered along her spine. She was only a short distance from her car now, and the man who’d been sitting on it stood up, facing her. Behind her, the young men continued their taunts. Then, suddenly, one of them swore.
“See who that is? C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
Amanda turned around and saw the youths moving off onto a side street. Then she turned back and saw the reason for their sudden flight.
She was so happy to see him, but it was a very short-lived happiness. How was she going to explain her presence here?
“I was about to call in some reinforcements and start a door-to-door,” Michael said, now leaning against her car door with his arms folded across his chest.
She said nothing as her mind spun, trying to find an explanation. Then, when it produced none, she went on the offensive.
“What are you doing here, Michael?”
“Waiting for you, obviously. I already called in to make sure that you hadn’t reported your car stolen.”
“I was just visiting someone.” She winced, knowing how lame that sounded—not to mention unbelievable.
“Where’s your car?” she asked, since she didn’t see the Porsche anywhere around.
“I’m driving that,” he replied, nodding toward a nondescript vehicle parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant. “Unlike you, I have enough sense not to bring my car down here.”
“Unlike you, I don’t have access to city vehicles,” she replied, mimicking his dry tone.
“That’s because you’re not a detective. Still, that doesn’t seem to have stopped you from playing one.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, digging her keys out of her pocketbook. Unfortunately, the cylinder of Mace fell out in the process and rolled against his shoe.
He reached down to pick it up, then dropped it into her purse. “That wouldn’t have done you much good against all of them.”
She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Thank you, Michael, for being so fearsome that they ran away as soon as they saw you.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s go get some dinner while you tell me what you found out.”
“I don’t have anything to tell you.”
“Okay, we’ll have dinner and I’ll tell you what you’re doing.”
“I’m going home.”
“Fine. I’ll pick up some pizza and meet you there.”
“I don’t recall having invited you.”
“A minor oversight on your part. See you in a half hour or so. You don’t want anchovies, do you?”
She unlocked her car and got in, ignoring him until he went to his car. He followed her for a few blocks, then turned off, but she knew he’d be a man of his word.
What story could she come up with that would satisfy him? It wasn’t that she couldn’t concoct something. The problem was that she doubted she could make it believable to him.
Furthermore, he was well within his rights to insist that she be honest with him. Otherwise, he could accuse her of impeding a murder investigation.
She wondered if he knew which building she’d visited. Perhaps not. It was probably too dark for him to have been able to see that distance clearly. Besides, it was a rather large building and surely he wouldn’t go door-to-door in it, looking for whoever had talked to her. Or would he?
She had exchanged phone numbers with Estelle Johnson, and as soon as she got home, she called the woman.
“Mrs. Johnson, this is Amanda Sturdevant. I have a big favor to ask of you. It’s possible that a man might be asking you if you spoke to me. He’s a police lieutenant named Michael Quinn.
“I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell him we talked. I realize that’s asking a lot, but it’s for a very good reason.”
“Of course, dear. Mum’s the word.”
Amanda thanked her profusely and hung up feeling very guilty. It was one thing for her to lie to Michael, but quite another to be asking someone else to lie to a police officer. Had she stepped over the edge?
She tried to tell herself that she hadn’t—at least not yet. After all, she wasn’t really concealing information relevant to a crime. Michael already knew everything Tina Jacobs had told her during those calls. The only thing Amanda was hiding was her name.
But she still cringed inwardly, knowing she was splitting some very fine legal hairs. Armed with Tina’s name, Michael was in a far better position to find her than she herself was.
The simple truth was that she wanted to trust Michael. She wanted him to help her get to the bottom of this. Or did she? Wasn’t what she really wanted was for it all to go away? Or failing that, for the truth to be far away from her and her family and the Verhoevens?
The doorbell rang. She hurried downstairs and opened it. Michael strode past her toward the kitchen, trailing pizza fumes. She noted that they obviously preferred the same place.
Neither of them said anything as she got out plates and napkins and a beer for him and soda for her. When she stole a quick glance at him, he was wearing his inscrutable cop face. They sat down across from each other at the small kitchen table. He’d gotten everything but anchovies, which was what she liked, too.
“Did I give you enough time to come up with something you think I’ll believe?” he asked in a pleasant conversational tone as he picked up a slice.
“If I recall correctly, you were going to tell me what I was doing down there.”
“Well, in that case, let’s start with what you weren’t doing. You weren’t visiting a sick friend or relative.”
She said nothing, curious now about how close he could come to the truth, and still hoping for some last-minute inspiration that would sidetrack him.
“So, with that possibility eliminated, I considered the likelihood that you’ve taken on a second job selling Avon. But since the neighborhood you were in seems an unlikely place for that, I think I can eliminate that, too.
“That leaves one of two possibilities. Either your anonymous caller called again and identified herself, and you were visiting her, or you finally figured out who she is and you’re trying to find her. My money, for what it’s worth, is on the last.”
“Why?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson. I happen to know that you’ve been spending some time going through the records at the P.D. office.”
“How did you know that?” she asked, astonished.
“I didn’t know—until now, that is. I was just guessing. I happened to be out in the plaza the other evening when I saw you drive into the garage. My office window faces the courthouse, and when I went back to it, I saw that there were no lights in your office, but there was a light on in the P.D.’s office.”
“That’s pretty thin evidence,” she challenged. “I could have been in the law library. It doesn’t have any windows facing the plaza. And I know from experience that people often work late in the P.D.’s office.”
“True, but you just confirmed it. If I were you, I’d rethink any criminal career you might be planning. So who is she?”
“I’m not going to tell you—yet.”
He arched a dark brow. “Do you know what ‘obstruction of justice’ means, Counselor?”
“I’ve heard the term somewhere. I haven’t found her yet, so there’s nothing to tell you.”
“Maybe you should find a dictionary and look up the word detective. Finding people is what detectives do.”
“She won’t talk to you, Michael, but she might talk to me. Remember that I tried to get her to call you, but she didn’t.”
“Okay, then give me her name. I’ll find her and you can talk to her first”
“No. First, I’ll try to find her, and if I can’t, then I’ll tell you and you can try.”
Michael was silent as he polished off his second slice of pizza. His dark eyes studied her thoughtfully. “You really believe that either Jesse or John Verhoeven is involved in this, don’t you?”
“No, but you believe that.”
“If I do, it’s only because I’m following the same trail that you’re following.” He held up a hand and counted his points on his fingers.
“Number one, the body is discovered on the island in the Verhoevens’ front yard. Number two, an anonymous caller—or a formerly anonymous caller—hints that she knows something about said body and she wants to tell you, not the police. Number three, Jesse also hints that she knows something, then clams up. And number four, it just so happens that John Verhoeven was known to be making regular trips to the island around the time of the murder, and his marriage was in trouble, making him a good candidate for an affair.
“Then there are all the other, extraneous things that might or might not mean anything—a ring of teenage prostitutes that could have included the dead girl, Jesse’s drug problems around that time, your accident at the same time.... You think it’s all connected, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes flat, black obsidian as he gazed impassively at her. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be sneaking around, playing detective.”
She said nothing as she got up to pour herself some more soda and get him another beer. But she knew it was only a temporary reprieve. His tone indicated that he intended to demand an answer.
She seated herself again and met his gaze. “I don’t know if it’s connected, but I do not believe that John Verhoeven—or anyone else in the families—was responsible for that girl’s death.”
“It’s possible that it was accidental, you know,” Michael said.
She frowned. “But you’ve already declared it to have been murder.”
“Technically, that isn’t true. I’m carrying it at the moment as a ‘suspicious death,’ because the medical examiner says that the blow to the back of the head, which was almost certainly the cause of death, could have happened in a fall or something like that.
“But she certainly didn’t bury herself, so at the very least, we’ve got failure to report a death and a few other charges.”
Amanda remained silent as she mulled over that information, wondering why she hadn’t thought about that herself—and then wondering if that made it more or less likely that anyone in the families could have been involved. But Michael had obviously already considered that.
“To my way of thinking, if it was an accidental death, it makes it even more likely that someone from the island was involved and that it happened there. Someone suddenly found a dead body on his or her hands and didn’t want to have to explain why the girl was on the island to begin with.”
It made a terrible sense. Jesse on the island with her drugged-out friends. Or John Verhoeven with a teenage prostitute. Death by accident. Fear of exposure. A burial place safe for all time.
Jesse, she thought. Far more likely Jesse than John. But what should she do? Jesse was emotionally fragile at the moment.
Amanda had been staring down at a half-eaten slice of pizza, and when she looked up, it was to find a very different expression on Michael’s face. Even as their eyes met, his expression hardened, but still, she saw that brief empathy, or sympathy.
She had no right to expect him to understand how she felt, and yet, she knew in that moment that he did. What had seemed to be such a great gulf between them narrowed, though she could not bring herself to believe it had gone away completely.
MICHAEL WAS HAVING a hard time with his eyes. No matter what he tried to do with them, they kept turning back to the V of skin exposed by Amanda’s open-collared lacy shirt. The contrast between the shirt and the severely tailored suit was about as sexy as it got, as far as he was concerned.
He wondered if she’d chosen it because she knew she’d be seeing him today—or was that just his good old male ego puffing itself up for no cause? For all he knew, she did just what he himself did: reach sleepily into the closet and put on the first thing that came to hand.
Yeah, right he thought. Tell me that you didn’t pay just a little more attention to what you wore today because you knew this meeting was scheduled. And tell me that you didn’t find the time to get a haircut because you knew you’d be seeing her.
And while you’re at it, why don’t you convince yourself that you decided to let her get away with keeping what could be vital information from you because you’re already juggling too many cases and a twenty-year-old skeleton isn’t a top priority?
The two detectives he’d brought with him so they could give Amanda and her assistant a firsthand report on the progress of a case involving the robbery and assault of a local doctor finished their presentations, and Michael was forced to turn his attention back to where it belonged. But it wasn’t easy. The lacy shirt reminded him of the lacy lingerie she was probably wearing beneath that suit, and that reminded him of—
“Could they really be naive enough to believe that a doctor carries a veritable pharmacy of drugs with him?” Amanda asked.
“Not naive, just dumb,” Michael said. “We’re talking room-temperature IQs here. The other possibility is that they had good reason to believe that he was carrying drugs that would interest them.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning.
“I want a court order to look into his prescribing habits. We’ve been hearing for some time that there’s a local doctor who’s got a nice business going in painkillers and steroids. It could be him.”
“It sounds to me as though you’re trying to turn a victim into a suspect,” Amanda stated.
They went around and around on that for a while before she agreed to the court order. It did not escape Michael’s attention that the others present seemed to sense some undercurrents between them. They couldn’t even be in the same room without the temperature going up and a certain amount of ionization occurring, like a thunderstorm was somewhere in the vicinity.
The meeting ended and the others filed out. Michael hung back, after telling his men to go on without him. When he turned back to Amanda, her eyes had gone wary. He was close enough to see the pulse at her throat begin to flutter rapidly.
“Do you have anything for me yet?” he asked. It had been four days since he’d caught her playing detective.
“No. I haven’t found her yet.” She refused to look at him as she spoke.
After casting a quick look over his shoulder to be certain they were alone, Michael hooked a finger beneath her chin and drew her face up to meet his gaze. She reacted to his touch as though it burned. And maybe it did. In fact, he hoped it did. He hoped she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
“Give it to me, Amanda. I’ll find her.”
She pulled away and shook her head. “Just give me a little more time, Michael. Please let me do this my way.”
Their gazes met and held, and he finally nodded. As he left her office, it occurred to Michael that there was a real irony here. Others might think that she was the one whose judgment would be swayed by their relationship. But in fact, he was the one who was letting his good sense take an extended vacation.
AMANDA LINGERED over coffee as most of the others left the banquet tables and moved off toward the dance floor. Fortunately, it would appear to those she was trying to avoid that she was simply being deferential to her former boss, in whose honor this gala was being held.
L
ewis Brogan, her predecessor as D.A., sat next to her at the head table, regaling everyone with tales of his ten years in that office. Amanda, who had only spoken to him a few times on the phone since his hospitalization and then sudden retirement, was shocked at how much he’d aged in a few months. Some people had suggested that he’d merely seized upon his illness to retire a few years early so he could spend more time golfing, but she knew now that they’d been wrong.
She both liked and respected Lewis, but she couldn’t help being troubled by the comparisons being drawn between them by the four hundred or so people here. Even this diminished version of Lewis Brogan was so much closer to what people expected of a D.A. How many of them were thinking about that, and then comparing her to her opponent in the upcoming election?
Neal Hadden was one of the people she was trying to avoid. He hadn’t been seated at her table, which had probably irritated him, but he’d already managed to stage a hearty handshaking scene with her before dinner. How on earth had she ever considered marrying him?
The other person she was trying to avoid was Michael. He hadn’t approached her at all and had favored her with nothing more than a brief nod when their eyes met across the room. But she knew that his patience must be running out—in fact, probably would have run out already if he hadn’t been overworked at the moment.
She’d gotten nowhere with her efforts to find Tina Jacobs. It amazed her that someone could lose him- or herself in a city this size. Furthermore, she was learning more than she wanted to know about the temporariness of the restaurant business: both the restaurants themselves and their employees. She’d tracked Tina to two places where she’d once worked, but no one there now remembered her, and when she’d asked about personnel records, she’d gotten some very strange looks.
So it seemed that the only thing left to her was just what Michael himself would be doing: checking every restaurant in the area in the hope that she hadn’t made an abrupt career change.
Lewis Brogan and the others who remained at the table finally began to drift off toward the dance floor or the smaller tables set up along its edge. Amanda thought about leaving, but decided that her early departure might be commented upon. So she reluctantly began to make her way through the crowd toward the table in the far corner where her father was seated with the mayor and his wife and a few others.
Lawman Lover Page 12
